Clean and Elegant

Monday, 24 October 2011

Preamble: I used to hope that I could somehow
transform my Facebook statuses into wonderful and engaging material. Then I
could publish it and create a great scandal since Facebook apparently owns
everything I post. So here it is. My poetic lines, compiled.
Enjoy! I look forward to the imminent lawsuit.

Property of Facebook

by Erica J. Schmidt

She can only find eight ways of looking at a goldfish.
Now she is learning about low-frequency words. Today, we get out of jail
free. If you look, you might find the joy of sex in your school
bag. Enjoy everything in moderation, except for yoga and protected
sex. Ensure that you release your groins and do laundry before Ricky
Bennet and Jesus Christ have birthdays. Hurry up, or else you’ll miss out
on the immaculate conception. Tis the season for kidneys and
bladders. Urine, not tinsel. Falala.

Now she is giving her garbage can a shower. In the
meantime, she wraps herself in straps above her traps and under her
crotch. Stopping at the kitchen, she facilitates sex between cabbage and
kitchen appliances.

Liver, she says, take rest with the merry gentlemen.
Despite this, she wonders what all the cool people in Montréal are doing for
New Year's, with the hope that they’ll ask her to participate. She wants
to make a bake with a bean in. How very cool. She wants to bake a
cake with a bean in it AND prepare her relationship with consonants.
That’s what she imagines the cool people are doing, but she could be
very, very wrong.

Today, it seems she must run away before her fertility turns
to mushrooms. A cartoon about a pinball is teaching her how to count to
twelve. With rhythm and song. She peaked at ten and stagnated at
eleven. She stagnates in Mushroomland.

The dormouse said, Feed Your Head and you forgot.
Notes may have bodies, and still be of no help. Mushrooms cannot be
inundated. No more clenching her asscheeks. Or his. Hereby,
she solemnly declares. Here, she plagiarizes a man who has not yet killed
himself."The afternoon passed as slowly and as painfully as a
walnut sized kidney stone."

Mushrooms cannot be inundated. Once she dreamt she
hopped like a crocodile, but it was in outer space and there were clouds in her
coffee. She wanted it to go on. She wanted to go commando.
Then she maxed out on self-indugence and hence did not elaborate. So much
depends upon sewers and REM sleep. A queer erotic thesaurus.
Temporary can last a long long time. Longer than it takes to move beyond
Mao with breasts. Many people never move beyond Mao with breasts.
Or that’s how it seems. Things may change after their unborn foetuses
sweeps away their fungus and digestive organs. Someone tagged her
as vegetarian abalone. She stepped to the right of her left
hemisphere. Lu and J Dick to the end. Unless some crazy tropical
disease gets them.

Two weeks later she returned from her right hemisphere
trip. In a dream, she hopped around like a crocodile, but it was in outer
space and there were clouds in her coffee. Twinkle, twinkle, little
sweet. Rest in peace in the land of Cud. A brain is a
mediocre commodity. Non-public-nuisance-fresh-eggs. Unlike, unlike, unlike. Buckyballs are perplexing and
non-addictive. Thank you for your compassion. It was better than
the clap. The J. Dick room is now open for practice. Have a great
lunch. The head she fell on was the size of a sandwich. The
sandwich he ate was the size of her head. All in all, it was an excellent
lesson in non-attachment.

Hip, hip hurray! She caught the bouquet! Does
anyone know of a reputable hypnotist? His raincoat could be less
attractive, but then it probably wouldn’t smell as bad. R.I.P. blender.
Every morning, groins are different. Welcome to a Domestic Holiday.
No papaya seeds are necessary. The groins display unlikely stoicism, but
the voice eludes them. Legs up a tree.

Shit went up the drain and she felt the need to
evacuate. Bad Lady. This has been a short-lived, inefficient
vocation, with questionable hygiene. With Great Conviction. Too
invincible. Uninvincing. There’s infection in the forks.

Ring-a ding-ding. It was a five-star day at a two-star
hotel. The beautiful and charming can be physically physically dyslexic
and forever alienated from 103 million deep breaths. Worse things have
happened in On-terrible. Patents, trademarks and smoked salmon.

There are dead pigeons everywhere. The kapots are kaput. And
every time you go swimming you release two teaspoons of urine into the water.
Every time. Whether you want to or not. Happy Labour Day. Happy Labour
Day to the Hawks and the Kapotasanas. Spank a needle fish in
Marshallese. The pigeon looked up, the pigeon looked down, the pigeon ate
bread and turned around. Chloramines form form when chlorine combines
with urea and/or fecal matter. Sniff. Someone should make the yamas
more practical. Knowledge isn’t a contest.

The drain is fixed and now she’s back. She’ll never
wear pants again. Pas de pantalons. Someone should also buy her
more pantyhoes. Hos? How. Outside her apartment, there are still dead
pigeons everywhere. Although they possess wings, they luxuriate in
gravity. One of them has an open wound. She could obtain a free
lunch, but the Buddha wouldn’t approve. As a rule, the Buddha does not
approve. But the Buddha is always right. Stevie Wonder too.
Mrs. Vanden Bosch, sometimes. Ninety Minutes of Weekly Anonymity. During this time,
she breaks it down, trying to be a real, funky lov-ah. Unfortunately, God
didn’t give her the right face. Fortunately, everyone can benefit from
the vibrations. She is fucking neurological pathways. The joke is
old, but the benefits are eternal. Her overhead costs are over her
head. She subsists on Lice and Rentils.

Party Time. Lice and Rentils. The people in this
room have several pink elephants on the go. They are waiting for Santa
Claus. If he doesn’t show up by nine o’clock, they’ll begin to make collages.
With the right attitude, she can feel fortunate and prosperous. Despite
his nipples being bigger than her breasts. It’s important to be
unfacetious at times. So that not everyone on Earth will bring immense
pain.

You can't spend the rest of your life with the tip of your
tongue stuck to your alveolar ridge. You, I or she. Hence, she employs
her pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. Cleansing the nerves, before the
kitchen. Complete liver function is useful whilst dropping back.

Life may not be the party we had hoped for, but while we are
here, we may as well decorate mason jars. Doing so will change your life
as much as the diva cup.

Schoolwork is like dirty diapers. Although shitty,
you’re better off dealing with them slash it. Naomi has learned to make
Brussel Sprouts. Nothing can ever take anything away from you, but just
the same, you may as well let it all go. She is still changing
diapers. Some dis-equilibrium is self-perpetuating. Strapped into
Supta Baddha Konasana reading, "Comment faire l'amour avec un Nègre sans
se fatiguer." Only six pages to go. Anything Is Possible When You
Skip Linguistics.

Tuesday, 4 October 2011

When I was a little girl, my favourite game was dress
up. The dress-up box sat underneath the pine bunk bed that my father had
built. In it was the white clown suit with polka dots that my sister had
worn to the hospital two days after I was born. To go with it was a
rainbow wig of curly haired clown hair that my grandmother wore to her
chemotherapy 20 years later. Also stored in the old trunk were my
parents’ wedding clothes-my father’s dark beige corduroy suit and my mother’s
seemingly patchwork purple, black and yellow baby doll dress.

“I just loved that dress,” Mom would exclaim when my sister
put it on. “I can’t remember why.” The material flowed out
from my sister’s hips, circling her ankles on the floor. I had seen
pictures of my parents’ city hall wedding. My sister had been the flower
girl and worn a mauve jumper. I was underneath my mom’s dress, which
stopped just above my mother’s knees.

“I wish you’d worn a pretty white one,” Amy-Louise
complained. While Mom was taking her nap, Amy-Louise told me that Mommy hadn’t
had a fancy wedding, because she still loved Amy-Louise’s Daddy who was
funnier and didn’t yell. My sister visited her father every other
weekend. When she returned on Sunday nights, she cried and screamed
because her daddy was nicer than mine.

I liked it when my sister went to her dad’s. Then I
had the whole dress up box to myself. Otherwise, Amy-Louise made me wear
something ugly like Great Grandpa Meier’s gardening overalls or Great Aunt
Lotty’s itchy woollen red bathing suit.

The best costume was the fairy princess dress which was
silky, shiny and pink, with bits of material that draped down the skirt, like
petals. Every time I put on the dress, my chest filled with pride and I
felt like the most beautiful woman in the world. There was something
extraordinarily special about me and the whole world knew it. I was
barely 4 years old.

On some Saturdays, my parents made me play with Darcy.
Darcy was four and a half, but I already came up to his nose. Like me, he
had blonde flowing, curly hair that ended at his chin. Darcy’s father
also had long hair which I didn’t understand. In my parents’ wedding
pictures, my Dad had long black hair, but he also had a beard so that everyone
that knew he was a man.

Darcy and I began each of our dress-up sessions in our
underwear. Squatting beside the dress-up box, Darcy cupped his face in
his hands and watched me as I slipped the princess dress over my head. I
slid into my mother’s navy blue pumps and took a few clunky steps until I knew
with absolute certainty that I was the most beautiful woman in the
world. Digging through the clown suits and wedding clothes, I came
upon Darcy’s costume of the day.

“Not pretty ones. Now put this on.” Reluctantly,
Darcy slipped into the bathing suit. The shoulder straps hung loosely and
the wool billowed around his crotch and abdomen.

“We’re going to beach,” I announced, dragging him by the
hand across the hallway to the bathroom. Our house was so old that the
bathtub had claws, no shower and individual faucets for the hot and cold
water. I turned both faucets on full blast.

“Get in,” I told Darcy.“My undies will get wet.” “Too bad. You’re a girl.” I meant that he wasn’t
allowed to take his underwear off, because then his penis would show and it
would ruin the effect.“So are you.”“But I’m a princess mother. It’s better. Get
in.” Darcy stepped onto the wooden bench that my father had made us and
climbed over the edge of the bathtub.

“Sit,” I ordered. He sat and as predicted, his
underwear got wet and Aunt Lotty’s bathing suit grew soggy and even loser
around his pelvis and middle. Darcy whimpered and began to kick his legs
as though he we pinned to the bottom to the bathtub and was trying to wriggle
himself free. I looked down at him with disdain and mimicked my father
when he was speaking to my mother.

“Christ, Darcy what are you doing?” Darcy whimpered
like a dead cat. “Crying won’t help.” Bubbles formed behind Darcy’s
buttocks. It smelled wet and foul like diarrhea. “You better not
pooh,” I warned.

Next time, stand up.”

“You said sit,” he said.“What are you, a dog?” I dragged the bench to the sink
so that I could reach above the sink to the medicine cabinet. Inside was
an open package of my mother’s pink disposable razors. I removed one from
the package, removed the plastic cover and clicked back to the bathtub. I
wanted to slide the razor along Darcy’s skinny legs like I’d seen my mom
do. Clutching Darcy’s handles, I pulled his leg straight and brought the
razor to his skin.“Hold still,” I said. Darcy ay on his back and
kicked the razor out of my hand. It fell into the water next to Darcy’s
thigh. Seizing the handle, Darcy stood up and lashed the blade at my
face, pushing it down hard so it broke the skin on my left cheek. I
screamed and rushed out of the bathroom. As I ran downstairs barefoot, blood
dripped on the puffed sleeves of the princess dress and I wet my pants. We wore our regular clothes to the emergency but Darcy
refused to borrow my underwear so he didn’t wear any. In the emergency
room, we sat on orange chairs and I held a washcloth on my bleeding
face. At the end of our row of clothes, an old bald man was
wheezing heavily. His right pant leg was rolled up and his purply veiny
leg was draped along the chairs beside him Across from us, a tall, pale,
emaciated lady with stringy blonde hair was shaking her hands, neck and feet as
she spoke to the fluorescent lights on the ceiling. “How are you, Sheila? Are you having a good day.
No I’m not. My colon is bleeding. Bloody colon. Bloody
colon. Not a good day.” She stood over, pulled down her pants to
her thighs and bent over, mooning the lights on the ceiling. “Bloody
colon!” Now she was yelling. She place one hand on either ass cheek
and spread them apart. “Bad day. Bad day. A security guard
came up behind her, pulled up her pants and led her away. My mother
stared, fascinated.“Every time I come to a hospital, I just wish I’d finished
my nursing degree. I just wish I’d finished it.” She was a piano
teacher.On the way home, my mother decided to raise her voice
briefly. “I’m really mad at you guys,” she declared. Darcy started
to cry but I remained silent and solemn. The doctor had said that
the cut wasn’t deep enough to need stitches and taped it together with a fancy
band-aid. My mother washed the princess dress by hand, but I could still
see the blood stains. Just the same, a few days later, I slipped it on
with my mother’s blue pumps and waited for the beautiful, extraordinary I’m so
special feeling. I crossed the hallway to examine myself in the mirror in
my parent’s bedroom Suddenly, the magic dress appeared too shiny and too
pink. Plus it was way too big for me. I knew that the special and
extraordinary feeling that I used to have didn’t match my face, which was
round, fleshy and of course, punctuated by the band-aid on my left cheek.
My unruly curly blonde hair hadn’t been combed or groomed and its knotted frizz
stuck out in a different directions. The image was so devastating compared
to the way I had imagined myself. Everything I had thought had been a
lie. I didn’t stop playing dress up, but I never wore the Prince
dress ever again. Also, I decided it was a bad idea to look in the mirror
if there was any hope in rekindling the spectacular sense of unique beauty that
had once arose so easily. Then one summer afternoon, I found myself in front of a
mirror in an elevated chair in a hair salon. My hairdresser’s name was
Terry which I thought was confusing. With her broad shoulders, fat chest
and thick legs, she could have been a man or a woman. She dug her nails
into my skull and ran her fingers through my curls which almost came to my
shoulders.“Curly hair’s so cute when it’s short,” Terry said. “And it will be so much easier to take care of,
sweetie,” my mother gushed. “Your first haircut at a real
hairdresser! How exciting!”I did not feel excited. I looked down at the floor so
that I would not see my round, sad, unspectacular face with the scar on my left
cheek.“Hurry up,” I said. “I want to go
swimming. Twenty minutes later, I looked in the mirror again and saw a
bowl of tight curls jutting out from my head.“So sweet,” my mother exclaimed. “Thank you
Terry.I refused to go swimming that day. I couldn’t wear my
blue and red bathing suit with the dolphin on the tummy. Everyone would
look at me funny because my hair made me look like a boy. I announced to
my parents that I was a boy now and I needed new clothes. They bought me
a pair of blue shorts and green swimming trunks with sharks on them.In August, my cousin got married in Manitoba. My aunt
wanted me to wear a frilly blue dress with flowers on it. I couldn’t
because it wouldn’t match my hair. They tried to convince me that it was
just like playing dress up, but I remained adamant. Finally, we agreed
upon blue trousers, a white dress shirt and suspenders. When Darcy came
over to play we played doctor, cars and cops and robbers. When I went
over to his house, we played with his guns, even though my mother didn’t want
us to.Darcy and I went to different kindergartens since Darcy’s
parents believed that children should be educated according to a theory made up
by a man named Mr. Walnut. My teacher’s name was Ms.
Strotman. On my first day, I wore my blue trousers from the wedding and a
red t. shirt with a yellow praying mantis and the words “Party Animal” on
it. My sneakers were navy blue with light blue Velcro. My hair had
grown out a little bit, but my mother had taken me to Terry for a trim on the weekend.
Now it fell a few millimetres above the tips of my ears.“You’re so pretty,” Terry had cooed from behind the
chair. I disagreed. I looked like a boy.All the other little girls had to sit on their heels or pull
down their frilly flowering dresses so that the little boys couldn’t see their
underwear. I sat in a comfortable cross-legged position next to Ms.
Stroman’s rocking chair. Ms. Strotman had long shiny wavy brown
hair that went down past her shoulder blades. She was wearing light beige
Capri pants and a dark purple 3 quarter length shirt with sparking designs on
it I thought that she was very beautiful but I was shocked that she
didn’t have to wear a dress on the first day of school. “Good morning girls and boys,” Ms. Strotman greeted
us. I wondered if I had to wait for my hair to grow back before I could
be a girl again. I wanted to be a girl, like Ms. Strotman. We stood up and pretended to sing along as Ms. Strotman
played Oh Canada on the piano. Afterwards, she gave each of us
strips of construction paper with our names on it. My strips were red and
orange. The first one was for writing practice and the second was to put
in the Helper of the Day box. Ms. Strotman reached in the box and pulled
out a long green strip of construction paper. Consequently, the Helper of
the Day was Ben. Ben stood up. He was tanned with rosy cheeks, blue
eyes and wavy brown hair that was just a little shorter than mine. Ben
got to turn the weather wheel and determine whether it was snowy, rainy, cloudy
and or sunny. He selected the day of the week out of seven rectangles of
Bristol board with bold, illegible letters printed on them. Ben knew that
it was Tuesday. Ms. Strotman had to help him with the month and
date. Still, I admired his choices.At playtime, I saw Ben in the Kitchen Corner where there was
a Fisher Price kitchen set, as well as a box full of dress up clothes. I
gazed longingly as Ben rummaged through the costumes and pulled out a police
hat and blazer. Tentatively I approached the kitchen set. I removed
the plastic egg from the frying pan and replaced it with the piece of plastic
French toast. “Hi,” Ben said. I’m the police. I say you wear a
tutu.” From the box, he procured a tutu with a light blue silk body suit
and a dark blue lacy skirt. It was beautiful, perhaps more beautiful than
the princess dress ever was. I stared at Ben
in shock. Didn’t he know that I was an ugly boy and that I
couldn’t possibly belong in a tutu.“I’m the police,” Ben repeated. Too stunned to
be delighted, I slipped the tutu over my trousers and party animal shirt.
Ben took my hand, opened the dishwasher and found a plate. He removed the
French toast from the frying pan and we ate it together.Playing with Ben was the closest I ever got to retrieving
the sensation of being extraordinarily beautiful, that I’d lost when Darcy cut
me in the bathtub. Every day at playtime, Ben at I met in the house
corner. He was the policeman and I was the blue ballerina, with trousers
for leotards. By December, most of my hair had grow back again. Ben
and I were partners in the Christmas pageant. Ben wore the policeman
uniform and I wore the tutu. At the end, Ben bowed and I curtsied.
Backstage we kissed on the lips. . My parents finally split up when I was twenty. While I
was helping my mother move I found a framed picture of Ben and I. We are
holding hands under a tree. There are pink flowers at out feet. I
am wearing a long white dress with tiny burgundy blossoms on it. I have
bangs and pigtails. After kindgarten, Ben and his family moved to
Australia. His mother helped him write me a postcard.“Ben says he loves you and misses you and wishes you were
here.” LOVE BEN was scrawled in enormous angular underneath Ben’s
mother’s writing. That was the last I heard of him.Our family moved to Perth in grade one, so we didn’t hear
much of Darcy either. I always kept the scar from when I made him wear
Aunt Lotty’s bathing suit. My Dad said that Darcy had a hard life.
He took a lot of drugs and didn’t get along with his parents. My mom said
that that was because he was a test tube baby. I wear dresses all the time now. And my hair is never
cut shorter than my shoulders. People tell me I am beautiful, but when I
look in the mirror, my reflection never comes close to the image of beauty, I
believed I’d exuded as a child. If I take of my dresses and sit down,
admirers would see my thighs spread out into what they really are.
Mammoth. Grotesque. Inside, I feel fragile, like a broken, ruined
delicateness. The part of me that matches that is Darcy’s scar. It
will live as long as I do. Last weekend, my dad called me to say that
during his sleep, Darcy had asphyxiated on his own vomit and died in his
girlfriend’s arms. He was 22. I just got a job modelling luscious wedding gowns next to
handsome grooms who look like the kind of men that Ben must have grown up to
be. At each makeup call I close my eyes as the assistant tweezes my
eyebrows, and covers my face with powders and blushes and skin coloured face
paint. Maybe, if she does a good enough job, when I stand beside the
groom, the dead wonder of the princess dress will come back. When I open
my eyes, I can’t see Darcy’s scar in the mirror anymore. I get up and
walk out to meet the groom. But before I even get through the door, I
know that the wonder won’t come back. It is too late. It has
been too late for a very long time.

Monday, 3 October 2011

I apologize for the delay in rendering the Verdict of my
Lululemon Interview. As fate would have it, I have not been busy folding
pants. My potential for transcending mediocrity has been assessed and
Lululemon did not call me back for a one-on-one interview. This is
somewhat disappointing. I was looking forward to discussing my long term
goals with a seasoned and elevated Lululemon educator. I thought that that
my ten-year health goal to quit coffee and alcohol was very measurable and
realistic. Some things take time. For my fifteen-year health goal,
I'm hoping to even out my pelvis. I'll let you know how that goes.The End.